Why not accept the conditionality of love? Why not adopt an idea of love where it's historic and contingent and evolves with another, based on the things the person does and what they are?
Because, if love really is unconditional, if it isn't going to depend upon and respond to the person, then the person isn't doing anything to grow, nurture, cultivate, earn, or flow into your love. The only thing that person is is a target for the love, a recipient for you to love. It might seem wholesome and good to love someone this way, but since they really don't have anything to do with how the love unfolds, then it's really all about you and how you feel.
If someone can do nothing to earn a love, they soon come to disregard its worth. Cheap grace doesn't make sinners into saints. But if love is something we earn and shape and cut and nip and grow, then we see its worth and the reward from our efforts.
I guess I'm saying maybe "unconditional" isn't always the best form of love.
It might not even be worth the cost.
Redditor 'polusplanchnos, having read my last post and one other
Well, that hit me where I live.
All my life I've heard that unconditional love is a divine and not a human trait. All my life I've heard, and come to hold, it as an ideal. All my adult life I've tried to emulate it as best I could.
I'm not there yet. Not even close, really: unconditional love, as far as I'm concerned, is what Jesus was alleged to have said on the cross. I'm no longer religious, in large part because I can't bring myself to believe in an "unconditionally loving"God Who judges, let alone condemns, let alone damns for eternity. But forgiving people who are killing you...that's love without condition.
But I'm trying. I'm perfectly okay with unrequited love: love as much as I do, as strongly as I do, and you kind of have to be. What still hurts -- a lot -- is when that love is reciprocated in some measure, and then withdrawn. It leaves me questioning everything, wondering where the truth lies. (Give me truths and don't spare the harshness: I'd much rather hear bitter truths that shred my soul than candy-coated lies.)
What stung the most in the above message was "it's really all about you". I don't mind telling you I had a little panic attack reading that the first time. It brought my past back in all its sour glory: a past in which everything was All About Me. I hurt people back then, acting childishly, kidding myself into thinking I was "living in the moment" and doing anything but. If everything I've resolved to do since is actually more of the same...
It's possible...probable...that I haven't defined my terms properly.
The older I get, the more I recognize that people are loveable, and the more loveable people I recognize. But it occurs to me that I need to put some qualifiers on 'unconditional' here: it does not mean indiscriminate. I don't love everybody...there are quite a few people I viscerally dislike. It's actually qualities or traits that I love, as I have said many times here: the physical is unimportant, within reason.
Those qualities: empathy and compassion; honesty; intelligence; humour; inner strength. Those are common qualities, but all of them together are relatively rare. I keep finding people, though, that have those qualities in spades. And so I love them. In whatever capacity is allowed. No more...but no less, either.
Of course it's more rewarding when that love is returned. Given a choice, that's the choice I'd make, every time. But I don't have that choice.No matter how much I love you, I can't make you love me, and wouldn't if I could. Possession isn't love, and neither is coercion.
Is there anything you have to do to earn my love? Yes, actually, there is. Be you. That doesn't mean be the you I fell in love with, because people grow and change. It means be who you are: a loveable human being full of empathy, compassion, honesty, intelligence, humour and inner strength.
And bear in mind that sometimes your empathy and compassion will fail you; sometimes you may be economical with the truth (studies have shown people tell an average of between ten and twelve lies a day); sometimes you'll do stupid things, sometimes you'll have no humour in your world at all; and sometimes, oh sometimes you'll feel weak. We're human: we fall down, we can struggle to get up again. I WILL LOVE YOU ANYWAY.
There's a category error here, I think. Contrary to popular belief, love is NOT "shaped and cut and nipped and grown". The expression of that love may go through all of those changes--but the love itself is a constant. If I wanted to get all spiritual on you, I'd say it was the background hum of the universe. Since I don't want to do that, I'll just say that everyone I've ever loved, I still love. Sometimes, in the interests of love, it's been necessary to sever ties. But as I said above, possession is not love. Whether you look through a microscope or a telescope, you're going to see marvels.
Do you know everyone you ever swore you'd love for life?
I don't know them anymore
I know their names, I'd recognize them on the street
and I don't love them
--Barenaked Ladies, "Maybe Katie"
Just another lyric that doesn't reflect love as I know and understand it...
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